If You're Not Streaming, You Should Be

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TwoForFlinching

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At some point last year, I tried talking my dad into ditching his cable in lieu of streaming with smart devices. With the cable boxes and basic package, his cable bill through CableOne/Sparklight was $3076/year, again, basic mid-tier cable. He showed a bit of interest in it, but everytime he'd look at it online he'd get frustrated from the amount of options and stay the course with what's comfortable. Brought it up again at xmas, decided to put it off again.

Made a spur of the moment trip home to fix his boat trailer this weekend, knocked it out way faster than he thought, so we had the whole day to throw dominoes. In the middle of a game, he mentioned I should hook him up with a streaming setup, so we did. Had to drive to Stillwater to find a roku ultra for the living room in stock, bought sticks for the rest of the TVs. Fifteen minutes to set up a stream option without giving up any of his or my moms favorites, future "cable" costs $660/year, no loss of channels after initial hardware costs. Cost offset in two months.

He's old but took to it like Lieutenant Dan in the Gulf waters. Easy peasy.

If you have decent internet, I encourage you to start streaming. Might just put a wad of cash in your yearly gun budget.
 

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I cancelled cable in early 2012 sand never looked back. I fact I’ve only bothered with streaming for around 2.5 years since then (Sling, AT&T TV, and now with YouTube).

And for the love of everything holy, cancel that home phone also. Get an Ooma or Google Voice number or something. I only have a work cell phone. My “home” number is a google voice number and app installed on an inactive old android phone making calls over WiFi. That’s 100% free. Super easy peasy.
 
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Glock 40

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I switched to streaming in 2014. I will say nothing beats a cable box for quick channel changes and interactive guides and dvr. It is much better today and I have tried all the different streaming tv providers. Still amazed how during live events crap always finds a way to buffer. I have actually pretty much weaned myself off tv. Once Covid hit I cancelled everything as all I really ever watched was international soccer.
 

dennishoddy

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We live in the sticks with no cable so Direct or Dish have been our only options.
We recently got a great wifi service that allows streaming and our TV's are smart.
Every streaming channel has their own fees. It's much more difficult to go between Hulu, YouTube and all the other streaming channels to watch programs.
We are on Direct TV. Basically never watch anything live so we can fast forward through commercials. Recording programs is simple and easy to search for what we want to watch when we want to watch it. We can be out of town for an extended period of time and come home to binge watch what we recorded.
We would hate to be back on the old time TV thing that requires one to be in front of the TV when the program is playing and not have the ability to record, save and watch the series later. Netflix saves what one has been watching for a period of time and then rolls it off.
The lack of a menu that lists recordings of all the watched channels is important to us at least.
What am I missing here?
I'd love to have it easy peasy as some have said.
 

Tanis143

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As a field tech for cox I actually endorse this. And no, not because I hate my employer (I actually like my local office, just don't like the turn the company has taken in the last 6-7 years). I actually see how often Cox has to renegotiate contracts with providers. And most of them start out wanting 500-600% increase. That is not a made up number. Not only that, but the contracts won't allow the split up of packages. Now that everything is digital it would be easy to offer individual channels, especially when a lot of them are switch digital channels. What I see is enough people moving to streaming to hit those providers in the pocket books and make them rethink their models. That, or MSO's switching to just broadband. Right now if Cox dropped television programing it would have enough spectrum bandwidth to offer 3 gig download speeds (and yes, be able to provide it).

If I didn't work for cox I wouldn't have paid tv service. Between streaming and OTA digital recorders, I could easily provide the wife and I what we want to watch for 10% of what the cable package would cost.
 

Tanis143

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We live in the sticks with no cable so Direct or Dish have been our only options.
We recently got a great wifi service that allows streaming and our TV's are smart.
Every streaming channel has their own fees. It's much more difficult to go between Hulu, YouTube and all the other streaming channels to watch programs.
We are on Direct TV. Basically never watch anything live so we can fast forward through commercials. Recording programs is simple and easy to search for what we want to watch when we want to watch it. We can be out of town for an extended period of time and come home to binge watch what we recorded.
We would hate to be back on the old time TV thing that requires one to be in front of the TV when the program is playing and not have the ability to record, save and watch the series later. Netflix saves what one has been watching for a period of time and then rolls it off.
The lack of a menu that lists recordings of all the watched channels is important to us at least.
What am I missing here?
I'd love to have it easy peasy as some have said.

If most of the shows you watch are on local channels, look into a PVR. Similar to Tivo (which works for OTA as well), it downloads the guide through your internet connection and has the ability to record shows, similar to how people did with vcr's but a much easier interface.

*edit* Just found out that most Tivo stuff doesn't support OTA, you have to buy specific models, and you still have to pay them a monthly fee for the right to use their interface, so maybe not the best option. I'm looking into current PVR options, and honestly I thought it would be more robust of an industry that it is.
 
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kirk1978

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We live in the sticks with no cable so Direct or Dish have been our only options.
We recently got a great wifi service that allows streaming and our TV's are smart.
Every streaming channel has their own fees. It's much more difficult to go between Hulu, YouTube and all the other streaming channels to watch programs.
We are on Direct TV. Basically never watch anything live so we can fast forward through commercials. Recording programs is simple and easy to search for what we want to watch when we want to watch it. We can be out of town for an extended period of time and come home to binge watch what we recorded.
We would hate to be back on the old time TV thing that requires one to be in front of the TV when the program is playing and not have the ability to record, save and watch the series later. Netflix saves what one has been watching for a period of time and then rolls it off.
The lack of a menu that lists recordings of all the watched channels is important to us at least.
What am I missing here?
I'd love to have it easy peasy as some have said.

You should be able to set your youtube to record anything then watch it later from your "library".
 

dennishoddy

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If most of the shows you watch are on local channels, look into a PVR. Similar to Tivo (which works for OTA as well), it downloads the guide through your internet connection and has the ability to record shows, similar to how people did with vcr's but a much easier interface.
Wife is the TV Junkie, the TV channels I watch are few but recorded so I can watch on my time when her stuff isn't running.
I love starting a program on direct TV going outside to walk the dog, do a small chore in the shop and then come back inside to watch the program while fast forwarding through the commercials, or in OU/OSU football games which are the only ones I watch where we have the capability to fast forward at low speed through the huddles and time outs to get back into the action part of the game and blow through halftime so we don't have to listen to the espn talking idiots. Knock a 90 minute show into 35 minutes or so and go do something else vs sitting in front of a tv all day.
We watch OKC local channels only because Direct won't supply the Tulsa channels unless your in their "zone", then a LOT of reality shows for the wife on the networks. Cable news networks and so on.
A lot of the streamers are channels we don't have an interest in watching like the classic westerns, shows from the 60's and so on.
 

TwoForFlinching

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If most of the shows you watch are on local channels, look into a PVR. Similar to Tivo (which works for OTA as well), it downloads the guide through your internet connection and has the ability to record shows, similar to how people did with vcr's but a much easier interface.

*edit* Just found out that most Tivo stuff doesn't support OTA, you have to buy specific models, and you still have to pay them a monthly fee for the right to use their interface, so maybe not the best option. I'm looking into current PVR options, and honestly I thought it would be more robust of an industry that it is.

I don't remember who it was on here that mentioned the HDHomerun OTA wifi adapter box, but it allowed me to have my antenna channels in every room streaming to firesticks. dvr surcharge is only $35/year. The Kodi app works better than their native app, but otherwise I'm 100% satisfied for buying it on a whim. I forget who it was that mentioned it, but I owe them a beer.
 

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